” width=”224″ height=”168″ align=”right” hspace=”10″ alt=”Axolotl Lakes southwest of Ennis, Montana, in the foothills of the Gravelly Range” title=”Axolotl Lakes southwest of Ennis, Montana, in the foothills of the Gravelly Range” />As organizers prepare for the biennial Rally for Public Lands, the conservation world faces down a changing climate, an administration determined to dismantle environmental protections, and its own internal contradictions.

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In response to news this week that Montana’s largest land manager is laying off 360 Montana-based federal employees, a spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service said Friday the agency is “confident that talented individuals” impacted by the staffing reduction will have “many opportunities to contribute to our economy and society in countless ways outside of government.”

The spokesperson, who asked to not be identified, went on to say that Brooke Rollins, who heads up the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Forest Service, “fully supports President Trump’s directive to optimize government operations, eliminate inefficiencies, and strengthen USDA’s ability to better serve American farmers, ranchers, loggers and the agriculture community.”

“We have a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of Americans’ hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar is being spent as effectively as possible to serve the people, not the bureaucracy,” the statement continued.

Montana Conservation Voters Executive Director Whitney Tawney wrote in an email Friday to Montana Free Press that the cuts threaten Montana’s economy, recreational opportunities and communities. 

“Indiscriminately cutting jobs for hardworking Montanans who manage our public lands is the opposite of common sense. These cuts will make our public lands less healthy, more likely to burn and less accessible,” she wrote. “Montana’s Congressional delegation must call President Trump now and tell him this is unacceptable. These decisions should be made locally, not by D.C. political hacks who know nothing of Montana’s public lands.”

The Forest Service spokesperson did not respond to Montana Free Press’ follow-up questions regarding severance pay for the affected employees or changes national forest users can anticipate in response to the workforce reduction.

According to a Thursday evening story by POLITICO, the Forest Service anticipated firing about 3,400 federal employees across “every level of the agency” as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the federal workforce. Wildland firefighters, law enforcement officers and other employees with a public safety nexus were exempted from the firing initiative. 

The workers that have been impacted are still within their probationary period, meaning they’ve been employed by the agency for less than two years, and perform a variety of roles ranging from road and trail maintenance to timber production and watershed restoration.

Hilary Eisen, a Bozeman-based policy director with the Winter Wildlands Alliance, said the layoffs will be felt by “everybody who visits or works on these public lands.”

The Forest Service administers tens of millions of acres of land across Montana. In addition to reviewing and authorizing timber sales and livestock grazing leases, the Forest Service plays an important role in the state’s multi-billion dollar outdoor recreation economy and conducts research on a variety of subjects ranging from how wildfires spread to the impact of “hot drought” on forests and promising forestry-oriented approaches to increase water yields.

“The people who lost their jobs maintain trails, discover and extinguish abandoned campfires before they become wildfires, clean outhouses, control weeds, process permits, and much, much more,” Eisen wrote in an email to MTFP. “Arbitrary cuts to the federal workforce is not a path towards efficiency or meaningful budget reductions, but it will harm communities all across Montana and the nation.”

The National Federation of Federal Employees, a union that represents Forest Service workers, has joined a coalition of unions in a lawsuit to halt the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce the federal workforce. In the lawsuit, the unions argue Trump’s efforts are undermining the role of Congress to establish funding for federal agencies. This, they say, is a violation of the separation of powers. 

In response to what it described as the “illegal gutting of the federal workforce,” the union on Thursday issued a press release urging the judicial branch’s intervention. 

“Federal workers are your friends and neighbors who have dedicated their careers to serving our country. We cannot let the President disrupt their lives and dismantle critical services relied upon by the American people,” NFFE National President Randy Erwin wrote. “If this Administration and Elon Musk truly wanted to make our government more efficient, they would have taken the time to understand that these actions will only lead to chaos and poor service for the American people.”

The layoff notices arrived via email the day after the deadline for the “Fork in the Road” offer for federal employees to resign and continue receiving paychecks through September, according to POLITICO.

MTFP requests for comment from the NFFE were not returned by press time Friday. On its website, the Forest Service-specific arm of the union is advising employees who received termination letters to contact a union representative and consider an appeal of the termination. 

The post USFS: ‘Talented individuals’ laid off from agency will find ‘countless’ opportunities’ outside of government appeared first on Montana Free Press.

” width=”224″ height=”168″ align=”right” hspace=”10″ alt=”Montana-made whiskey isn’t the only commodity affected by trade with Canada” title=”Montana-made whiskey isn’t the only commodity affected by trade with Canada” />Fast-moving announcements of U.S. trade wars against Canada, Mexico and China leave state stakeholders bracing for market turmoil.

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By the time the 2025 session of the Montana Legislature concludes in late April or early May, the state’s 150 lawmakers will have cast thousands of votes on proposals affecting everything from property taxes to pet insurance to human health care, ultimately forwarding hundreds of bills to the desk of Gov. Greg Gianforte.

The often-turbulent legislative firehose is a lot to keep track of even if you’re a seasoned journalist or lobbyist working in the Capitol — much less if you’re an everyday Montanan trying to follow what your representatives are doing from elsewhere in the state. The sheer volume of bills, votes and debate that flows through the Capitol halls can quite easily sweep a casual observer off their feet.

Launching for the 2025 session today, our digital Capitol Tracker guide is intended to offer a lifeline in that storm, helping Montanans ranging from Capitol insiders to bewildered citizens make sense of the quantifiable aspects of legislative proceedings. (For insight on the unquantifiable ones, subscribe to Tom Lutey’s Capitolized newsletter.)

The digital guide mirrors information presented on the Legislature’s newly revamped official website, but is intended to load faster and be easier to use, especially on mobile phones. We’re also able to supplement the sometimes-terse official data with additional information such as links to stories MTFP reporters have written about particular bills or analyses of specific lawmakers’ voting records.

You can find the guide here:

This year’s version of the tracker will be largely familiar to readers who used the 2023 edition. However, we’ve had to rework much of the logic that moves information around behind the scenes (sometimes repeatedly) to accommodate the new legislative website’s various birthing pains. As part of that work, we’ve also removed a few features we had on the prior edition while we think through how we can reconceptualize them.

As of today, the 2025 tracker includes the following functionality:

A page with information for each introduced bill (all 664 of them as of this writing), including the sponsor and the bill’s progression through the various legislative hurdles that stand between a bill and its enactment as law. Bill pages also include links to the full bill text and proposed amendments, as well as fiscal and legal notes for bills that have them.

A page for each of the Legislature’s 100 representatives and 50 senators, including their public contact information, their committee assignments, a list of bills they’ve sponsored and the results of their most recent election. Those pages also include an analysis of how often lawmakers are voting with their Republican and Democratic colleagues.

Lookup tools that let you search bills by title and number and lawmakers by name. You can also look up your district’s lawmakers by entering your address.

A couple of other notes: Due to the sheer volume of information included in the Capitol Tracker and our ongoing efforts to work with the new legislative website, we expect we’ll have a few bugs to sort out in the coming weeks. We’d greatly appreciate your help (and patience) on that front.

Additionally, while we already have some plans for features we’re hoping to add in the coming weeks, we’d love to hear suggestions about ways we could make this tool more useful to you.

You can reach our data team, Data Reporter Jacob Olness and Deputy Editor Eric Dietrich, at jolness@montanafreepress.org and edietrich@montanafreepress.org.

TAKE A LOOK: MTFP’s 2025 Capitol Tracker.

The post Our digital guide to help you track the Montana Capitol is back appeared first on Montana Free Press.

” width=”224″ height=”168″ align=”right” hspace=”10″ alt=”Buckle up. As airlines add direct flights to and from Bozeman and elsewhere in Montana, the GYE expects a busy season of visitors” title=”Buckle up. As airlines add direct flights to and from Bozeman and elsewhere in Montana, the GYE expects a busy season of visitors” />Surging direct-flight jet service portends another busy tourist summer in Greater Yellowstone and beyond.

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Almost every Saturday and Sunday morning for the last year, Beth McBride, Carli Seymour or another self-described “Bar Fairy” roam the Flathead Valley looking for abandoned cars in front of bars. When they find one parked from the night before, they’ll slip a $5 gift card to a local coffee stand on the windshield as a token of appreciation for the person not driving home under the influence. 

Seymour came up with the idea after her brother and McBride’s son, Robert “Bobby” Dewbre, was struck and killed by a suspected drunk driver as he walked across a street outside of a Columbia Falls bar on March 11, 2023. Dewbre was out celebrating his 21st birthday.

The man behind the wheel that night, John Lee Wilson, later pleaded no contest to three misdemeanor charges stemming from the incident and is presently serving 18 months in the county jail. Flathead County Attorney Travis Ahner declined to charge Wilson with felonies because he did not think he could win a conviction. Although Wilson was intoxicated, he was not speeding or swerving, and Dewbre had been jaywalking. Instead, Wilson was charged with operating a vehicle without liability insurance, careless driving involving death or serious bodily injury and aggravated driving under the influence.

McBridge said it was evidence of why the state needs to enact tougher laws related to drunk driving — something her group, Montana Bar Fairies, is now pushing for in the Montana Legislature. That push comes amid a recent spike in fatal drunk-driving incidents in northwest Montana, including four fatal accidents that are being investigated as DUIs between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, according to the nonprofit.

“We have an extreme drinking culture in Montana,” McBride said. 

According to the Montana Department of Transportation, between 2019 and 2022, 335 people were killed in crashes involving an alcohol-impaired driver with a blood-alcohol concentration of .08% (the legal limit) or higher; 72% of those fatal accidents involved a driver with a BAC of .15% (twice the legal limit). In 2020, 66% of all highway fatalities were the result of impaired driving, up from 58% the previous year. As a result, Montana has one of the highest fatal drunk-driving rates in the country. 

In January 2024, Seymour was driving to her mother’s house early one morning when she saw cars parked in front of a Kalispell bar. It was then that she had the idea to start putting coffee cards on windshields to thank those people for not driving and encourage others to do the same. 

The first weekend, Seymour and McBride handed out 21 cards in the Columbia Falls area. The next weekend they distributed 10 cards in Kalispell and then 29 and 49 cards the following two weekends in Whitefish. In the year since, Montana Bar Fairies has handed out 894 gift cards worth more than $4,400. Many of the cards have been donated by Copper Mountain Coffee, Florence Coffee Company and others, or covered by financial donations made to the nonprofit. Along with the gift cards left on windshields, volunteers include a small card featuring the story of someone killed by a drunk driver. 

“It’s felt like we have been able to turn our grief into something positive,” Seymour said. “We want to reward good behavior rather than shame people.”

McBride said the reaction to the cards has been overwhelmingly positive. The group is now turning that goodwill into action by supporting LC 1340, a bill requested by Rep. Braxton Mitchell (R-Columbia Falls), for consideration this legislative session. The bill, which is tentatively supported by the Montana County Attorneys Association, is still being crafted but would revise state law to include a minimum of three years in prison for anyone convicted of aggravated vehicular homicide while under the influence. McBride said it would also allow prosecutors to consider only a driver’s blood-alcohol content when making charging decisions.  

McBride said the changes would mean harsher punishments for people like the man who struck and killed her son. 

“It’s just wrong that the guy who killed Bobby just got 18 months,” she said. “This is a common-sense law.” 

LC 1340 is scheduled for a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on Jan. 27. McBride is encouraging people to attend the hearing in Helena to support it. 

For more information, visit montanabarfairies.org. 

The post Nonprofit pushes for tougher DUI laws amid spike in fatalities appeared first on Montana Free Press.

CHOTEAU — A fire damaged part of the Choteau Acantha’s building between 2 and 4 a.m. Tuesday. No one was injured. The blaze nearly destroyed one of the building’s three rooms and severely damaged items in adjacent rooms.

Officials have not yet determined the cause of the fire at the newspaper’s office. The Teton County Sheriff’s Office and Teton County Fire & Rescue  declined to comment Tuesday on the ongoing investigation.

The Choteau Acantha is a weekly publication that serves Choteau and the surrounding communities. Owners Melody and Jeff Martinsen purchased the paper in 1990. In their roughly 35-year tenure, they have not missed publishing an edition.

The Martinsens said they will still deliver the weekly newspaper Wednesday morning. The Choteau Acantha staff sent this week’s edition to be printed in Bozeman on Monday night. On Tuesday, a representative of the newspaper picked the print editions up from Conrad. The Martinsens spent Tuesday morning picking ceiling tiling off their label maker, labeling the newspapers with delivery addresses and then dropping off the copies at the post office for distribution.

“We have no intention of letting this stop the 131st year of continuous publication of the Choteau Acantha,” Melody Martinsen said in an interview Tuesday. “We pick up the pieces and we keep going on.”

The blaze was first reported by Caine Gray, a bartender working roughly a block away from the Acantha building at the Choteau American Legion.  Gray noticed thick smoke in the street when he left work around 2:20 a.m.

“The way this was concentrated, I knew something wasn’t right,” Gray said. “So I hit the alleys.”

Gray called the Teton County Sheriff’s Department before driving around Choteau in search of the fire. In 2021, Gray rescued his two children from his blazing home in the middle of the night. Within minutes, he spotted smoke billowing from the window’s of the Acantha building. Teton County Fire & Rescue, Fairfield Volunteer Fire Department and Choteau Volunteer Fire Department sent  25 firemen and five engines to put out the blaze.

We have no intention of letting this stop the 131st year of continuous publication of the Choteau Acantha. We pick up the pieces and we keep going on.

Melody Martinsen, Choteau Acantha Editor

Melody and Jeff Martinsen salvaged six computers in addition to several other pieces of equipment and assorted documents. Though the rescued items sustained some damage from smoke, soot and water, “they’re all in working condition, which is an amazing testament to how fast our firefighters locked it down,” Melody Martinsen said.

“The whole staff, they’re great people,” Gray said. “We would do anything and everything for them.”

Community members have offered the Martinsens and Choteau Acantha staff workspaces, office supplies and food.

“They say it takes a village,” Gray said. “ And I think Choteau’s about the best village you can get.”

The post Fire damages Choteau Acantha newspaper building appeared first on Montana Free Press.

Story text is available for republication under MTFP’s standard republication policy. To republish story graphics, contact High Country News at syndication@hcn.org.

On the banks of the Flathead River, along an oxbow southeast of Kalispell, a pair of million-dollar homes sit adjacent to each other on large lots. At a glance, they appear quite similar, each the sort of rural dream house that has become an inescapable part of Montana’s landscape.

A look at their tax bills, though, reveals a difference, the result of a singular quirk of Montana’s tax code.

One of the two parcels, like most homes in Montana, is classified as residential property. The other, however, is designated agricultural, a category that qualifies it for a tax discount worth thousands of dollars a year.

The residential property includes a 2,893-square-foot house and several outbuildings on a 10-acre lot. In 2023, the land was worth $585,000 and the buildings just over $1 million, according to state records. The property tax bill was about $9,100.

Next door, the agricultural property, also 10 acres, contains a 3,673-square-foot home along with garages, a dock and other structures, together valued at $1.2 million. A Zillow listing, which indicates that the property was last sold in 2018 and was later available for rent, describes it as a “gorgeous Montana river estate” with a boathouse, a putting green and an orchard. This property’s 2023 tax bill, which was mailed to an address in Florida, was about $2,100 lower than that of its neighbor.

If you exclude the taxes levied on all the structures, including the home, the owner of the residential property paid an effective rate of $331 an acre in 2023, an amount similar to nearby residential parcels. Meanwhile, the neighboring agricultural property — putting green and all — paid just $2 an acre.

The discrepancy is the byproduct of a tax system designed to encourage farming and ranching and preserve Montana’s agricultural character by taxing agricultural property at much lower effective rates. Unlike most other properties, agricultural land is valued not for its likely selling price, but rather for its agricultural production potential. In recent decades, however, as Montana’s luxury real estate sector has grown, the line between bona fide agricultural operations and high-end residential properties has become increasingly blurry.

Montana Free Press and High Country News analyzed state property data, combined with public records and aerial imagery, and found that thousands of million-dollar homes benefit from the agricultural tax provision. As of 2023, the most recent year for which detailed data is available from the Montana Department of Revenue, the analysis found that at least 1,882 million-dollar homes received a tax break as fully qualified agricultural property, while at least 1,338 others got a lesser discount through a partial agricultural designation.

While those million-dollar properties appear to comply with Montana’s tax law, they illustrate what critics consider the system’s failure to tax luxury real estate fairly. More than half of the properties were located in Gallatin, Flathead, Park and Ravalli counties, all parts of western Montana that have become epicenters of the state’s real estate boom. Many of the owners who get agricultural tax treatment for high-value properties are prominent professionals engaged in non-agricultural careers, including a former Goldman Sachs executive, the CEO of a billion-dollar food service corporation and Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, a former technology executive. Because of how Montana’s tax system divides the cost of local government services, most of their savings translate into higher bills for other taxpayers. 

With the 2025 Montana Legislature set to open Jan. 6, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers say they want to tackle rising residential property taxes, which saddled homeowners with a median increase of 21% between 2022 and 2023 following the pandemic-era surge in housing prices. Some lawmakers also say they want to pass bills that would make the agricultural tax system more equitable.

Brian Campbell, who runs a cherry orchard and a growers’ co-op on Flathead Lake, would certainly welcome tax reform. In an interview, he said he’s annoyed by the owners of nearby expensive properties who produce just enough agricultural income to qualify for agricultural tax status, clearing a threshold that’s currently set at only $1,500. 

“There’s people that totally take advantage of this and treat it as just a big loophole in the system,” he said. 

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The agricultural tax issue has simmered in the state Capitol for decades without producing a politically viable solution. A bill that would have tied agricultural tax benefits to federal farm aid eligibility, for example, was voted down during Montana’s 2023 legislative session, spurring its supporters to form a working group to develop more refined proposals for 2025. During a meeting of the group in February, Rep. Mark Thane, D-Missoula, read aloud from a decades-old state memo prepared in 2001.

“‘Some buyers are purchasing large ranches for their American dream and taking land out of agricultural production,’” Thane read.

He looked up from the memo at his colleagues, who were seated around two long tables in a Department of Revenue meeting room. “Twenty-four years ago,” he said, “that prompted individuals to take a look at this very issue, and here we are, still looking at this issue.” 

Many Western states give farms and ranches special tax treatments and have encountered similar headaches. In Wyoming, for example, a proposal in the state Legislature to increase the revenue threshold for an agricultural tax break went nowhere in 2022. And a 2011 Denver Post story about a proposal to overhaul Colorado’s agricultural tax system noted that the issue had “vexed” state politicians for “decades.”

Those debates are sticky in part because of how tax policy can guide the way land is used across the West. Tax rates help determine whether suburban and rural land is used for farming or ranching, preserved for conservation purposes, or developed into housing and businesses. Proponents of agricultural tax benefits argue that they help keep such land undeveloped and protect farmers and ranchers from often-uncertain commodity markets.

“There’s an argument that all Montanans benefit from having a vibrant ag economy in Montana, not just for the economic benefits of it being Montana’s largest industry, but it has cultural value for us as Montanans,” said Chuck Denowh, a lobbyist and executive director of the United Property Owners of Montana, who was part of the working group. “As you drive around the state, our ag properties are one of the things that make the state beautiful.”

Montana’s tax code, though, is unique in that it allows many properties to qualify for agricultural tax benefits without requiring proof that they are used for agricultural purposes. Colorado, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon and the Dakotas all require landowners to submit applications showing some combination of crop, grazing or land-leasing income. 

In contrast to other states, any Montana property larger than 160 acres automatically qualifies for the full agricultural tax status, whether or not it demonstrates farm or ranch income. Many mid-sized rural properties — those between 20 and 160 acres — also automatically qualify for a partial agricultural classification, even if they don’t report enough farm or ranch income to qualify for the full tax break. That policy is unique to Montana, according to state analysts. 

Additionally, the annual production-income threshold that qualifies smaller properties for full agricultural status — currently just $1,500 — represents a low bar for well-off property owners to clear. It hasn’t been updated since 1986.

Campbell, who was also a member of the working group, pointed out that a property owner can make $1,500 a year from just a handful of cherry trees. Around Flathead Lake, for example, where planting cherry trees on high-value land is common, the cost of maintaining a few trees is quickly offset by the tax savings. 

“That’s obviously the motivation behind a lot of little orchards up here,” he said.

Montana has about 326,000 non-vacant residential parcels. In comparison, more than 77,000 Montana taxpayers benefit from either the full or partial agricultural tax status of their property, which encompasses more than 50 million acres of land, according to the state revenue department. MTFP and HCN estimate that residential properties smaller than 20 acres had their underlying land taxed at a median effective rate of $1,609 per acre in 2023, while similar properties with a full agricultural designation paid just $6.61.

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One Montana property that benefits from the full agricultural tax break is Gov. Gianforte’s longtime home on the outskirts of Bozeman. The governor and his family own several parcels there, along the East Gallatin River, including an 11.4-acre property with a house and detached garage that is currently valued by the revenue department at $1.3 million.

The Gianfortes’ tax bill for that parcel — about $7,400 in 2023, according to county tax records — briefly became election season fodder when the campaign of the governor’s unsuccessful Democratic challenger, Ryan Busse, published a video interview with the owner of a neighboring property who expressed tearful frustration that her tax bill was rising faster than the governor’s. Her property, which also sits along the East Gallatin, includes two dwellings valued at $1.5 million on a 10.2-acre parcel classified as residential land. It received a tax bill of about $12,200 in 2023, including approximately $826 per acre in taxes on the land.

MTFP and HCN estimate that residential properties smaller than 20 acres had their underlying land taxed at a median effective rate of $1,608 per acre in 2023, while similar properties with a full agricultural designation paid just $6.61.

Meanwhile, right across the street, the governor paid taxes at $5.75 an acre for his property. Thanks to his agricultural designation, Gianforte’s total land tax in 2023 was about $66 for his 11-acre property. The state’s tax rolls included about 176,000 residential properties with homes on town or city lots that year, most less than a quarter-acre; HCN and MTFP estimate that 97% of their owners paid more land taxes than the governor.

Montana’s public records office denied an open records request for the application materials used to justify the Gianforte property’s agricultural status last year, saying they contained income information that the revenue department was required to keep confidential. A spokesperson for the governor’s office said in early December that land owned by Gianforte and his wife, Susan, rotates between irrigated barley and alfalfa production and is also used to board horses and mules. The spokesperson did not answer questions regarding the amount of agricultural income generated by those activities or whether the governor supports changes to the state’s agricultural tax structure.

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The partial agricultural status available to mid-sized properties without demonstrated agricultural income — formally known as “non-qualified” agricultural land — has been a source of intense debate since its implementation in 1993.

The Legislature has loosened qualification requirements for partial status over time, thereby benefiting more property owners in platted subdivisions. As of 2023, roughly 30,000 Montana taxpayers benefited from the category’s tax treatment, according to the revenue department. 

A 2022 Montana Department of Revenue report demonstrates the difference that even a partial agricultural status can make. In one case, in southwest Montana’s Beaverhead County, department staff identified a situation where a 19.03-acre parcel, just under the threshold to qualify, owed $942 in taxes, while an adjacent 20.09-acre parcel, just over the threshold, owed only $482. Meanwhile, in Gallatin County, a vacant 19.989-acre lot owed $5,821 in taxes, while a nearby vacant lot of 20.011 acres owed just $168.

Because the partial agricultural designation provides substantial tax benefits to tens of thousands of property owners, however, efforts to repeal it have met with powerful political headwinds.

In 2017, for example, a bill to repeal the category, sponsored by Greg Hertz, then a state representative and now the chair of the Montana Senate’s Taxation Committee, drew so much blowback that he withdrew the proposal before its first committee hearing. Hertz and fellow Republican lawmaker Jeff Essmann, who also worked on agricultural taxation bills that year, recalled that both efforts were deluged with opposition. And Essmann said he expects similar political dynamics to erupt again.

“[Tens of thousands of] people that are suddenly going to have to pay market rate on their homes, or do some work to qualify as ag, can generate a lot of phone calls to representatives and kill a bill pretty fast,” said Essmann, who is no longer in the Legislature. 

“It’s hard when somebody’s got a sweet deal to remove it — that’s just the reality of life,” he added. “But it is a very sweet deal.”

Additionally, while eliminating the exemption would raise taxes dramatically for those property owners who currently benefit, it would lower them only slightly for other taxpayers. 

An analysis by the revenue department estimates that eliminating the partial ag exemption would increase the average qualifying property’s annual tax bill from $3.84 to $42.75 an acre — a $1,167 increase for a 30-acre property. In exchange, the department says, the median residential tax bill would decrease by a mere $33 a year.

That’s enough, Hertz said, to convince him the Legislature should just leave the designation alone.

“You’re saving somebody a dollar, but increasing somebody’s taxes by several thousand,” Hertz said. “To me, that just doesn’t make sense.”

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Neil Cornish, a professor of astrophysics at Montana State University, illustrates the tricky ways that current tax policy and possible changes can affect individual taxpayers. In 2020, Cornish bought a former cattle ranch in the Shields Valley, outside the small town of Clyde Park. At the time, it was just under 160 acres, and since Cornish neither farms nor ranches, it qualified for the partial agricultural designation.

Cornish, who said the classification initially struck him as “a bit of a weird thing,” recently did a boundary adjustment with his neighbor, boosting his property to just over 160 acres. He did so in order to qualify for an antelope hunting tag that’s available to larger agricultural landowners.

But that seemingly minor adjustment meant that his property now automatically qualified for the agricultural tax break for properties over 160 acres. As a result, he said, his property taxes went “down by a decent amount.” In an interview, Cornish said that the annual taxes on one portion of his land, the 1-acre homesite where his family has built a house and an outbuilding, dropped from about $2,000 to just $40. 

According to Park County records, Cornish and his wife, Jamie, had a total tax bill of about $8,300 in 2024, down from about $9,400 the prior year. Cornish noted that the recent addition of the two structures offset the agricultural tax savings by boosting his non-land property value.

One bill that legislators are putting forward, House Bill 27, would do away with the automatic agricultural tax break, thereby removing Cornish’s tax break unless he can demonstrate sufficient farm or ranch income.

That bill would bring Montana in moline with other Western states by requiring landowners like Cornish who want to receive or maintain an agriculture tax break to submit an application documenting a minimum level of farm or ranch income. And that income standard would also increase to at least $4,000 a year.

Losing the automatic tax qualification, Cornish said, would push him to consider “getting some agricultural activity going at some point.” He added that generating enough income to surpass the proposed standard “starts to be a more serious endeavor.”

That’s precisely the sort of effect lawmakers who are supporting the agricultural tax reform bills hope to have. 

“What we want to do is generate more ag production,” said Sen. Becky Beard, who led the working group and will serve as the vice chair of the Legislature’s Senate Taxation Committee this year. “If they’re not bona fide ag producers, then we have to look at a more realistic tax classification for those individuals or entities.”

Cornish believes large rural properties should get some sort of tax break to encourage preservation of habitat and open space. Large herds of elk, mule deer and antelope pass through his property, he said, which other than a small, out of use hayfield is largely sagebrush and high-desert juniper. “It’s basically like a nature preserve,” Cornish said. “It seems to me that that shouldn’t be taxed the same as a small subdivision.”

Lawmakers who helped draft the bills appear to agree. The bill that would end automatic agricultural classifications includes a clause replacing the partial agricultural tax category with one for “idle” land, at a higher effective tax rate.

Another draft bill, Senate Bill 4, would increase taxes on homesite land directly underneath high-value homes built on agricultural properties while shielding properties valued at less than the statewide average — potentially raising taxes for property owners like Cornish and the Gianfortes even if they retain their agricultural designation. Colorado passed a similar bill in 2011, reclassifying the land beneath structures that were not “integral” to agriculture as residential. The change was so controversial at the time that at least one county assessor refused to enforce the law.

According to an August revenue department analysis, the homesite proposal would increase taxes on more than 6,000 properties statewide, a majority of them in just four counties where land is selling at particularly high market values. In Bozeman’s Gallatin County, for example, the average property classified as agricultural would see a tax increase of $1,248 a year. The department estimates that this change would collect enough extra revenue to save the median residential property $14.05 annually.

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Montana lawmakers pushing reform efforts face a dilemma: How can the agricultural tax system support farmers and ranchers without creating a system that disproportionately benefits the wealthy? For example, the bill that would require Cornish and other property owners to apply for an agricultural designation would also require them to demonstrate an additional $6 of agricultural income beyond the new $4,000 threshold for each acre they own over 640. It would specify that certain activities don’t qualify as agricultural income, explicitly excluding revenue from, among other things, corn mazes, personal horse boarding, hunting access, dude ranches and some conservation efforts.

If the bill passes in its current form, prominent mega-landowners Dan and Ferris Wilks would be among those who would be required to apply to hold on to their agricultural status. The Wilks brothers, who hail from Cisco, Texas, bought holdings in Montana after making a multibillion-dollar fortune in the fracking business. State property data indicates that Wilks Ranch Montana LTD owned 814 parcels totaling 301,732 acres across six Montana counties as of 2024. All of those parcels — including four containing at least a million dollars’ worth of residences or other structures — were categorized as agricultural. 

With the new qualification standards, the Wilks Ranch would have to demonstrate an annual agricultural income of $1.8 million.

Walter Schweitzer, president of the Montana Farmers Union, doubts that the increased income standard would prove a greater hurdle for the state’s larger private landowners than the existing $1,500 threshold. 

“It’s not that arduous,” he said in an interview. “It wouldn’t be a big deal.”

Schweitzer added that while he has no love for the wealth inequality represented by trophy ranches, he does think they can contribute to agricultural communities caught in what he described as a flawed system. Large landowners often lease their land to young farmers or ranchers who are trying to gain a foothold in a difficult industry, he said. He also expressed some fear that the $4,000 income standard could be a challenge for new or small-scale farmers who own little parcels of land and are part-time farmers. 

Like generations of Montana lawmakers, Schweitzer — whose brother is former Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer — said he’s stumped about how best to tackle the issue. 

“I don’t know,” he said in an interview. “Do you have a good answer to how to close that loophole? Because I would sure like to.”

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These hard truths loomed over the working group. Even before the bills were written, its members agonized over how to build the political backing necessary to bring them to the governor’s desk, particularly generating support from the state’s agriculture community.

Still, making the state’s tax code more equitable is worth a fight, said Rep. Sherry Essmann, R-Billings. Essmann, who is sponsoring the application bill, is married to Jeff Essmann, the former lawmaker who pursued agricultural land tax reform in 2017.

“There are people coming in, and they’re taking out perfectly good ag property, or grazing property or ranch property, and using it as their private playgrounds,” she said at the August meeting. 

“They’re not being taxed at the rate that they should be taxed for this property,” she added. “And I think, honestly, it makes people in Montana look kind of silly that we haven’t figured this out.”

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Photo illustrations by Luna Anna Archey/High Country News

Image credits: Property parcel outlines in Bozeman, Montana, including Gov. Greg Gianforte’s property. Montana State Library; Property tax history for an agriculturally designated property in Kalispell. Screenshot from Redfin; The home on an agriculturally designated property in Kalispell. Screenshot from Zillow; An antler chandelier. Henry Burrows/CC via Flickr; The state seal of Montana. Wikipedia; Home icon. Vectorsmarket15/Flaticon

Property parcel outlines in Kalispell, Montana, including neighbors, one agriculturally designated, the other residentially designated. Montana State Library; Data screenshots from said residentially designated property. Montana State Library; A previous listing of said agriculturally designated property. Screenshot from Zillow

Homes in Bozeman, Montana. Dan Nguyen/CC via Flickr; Gov. Greg Gianforte speaks at a bill-signing ceremony at the Montana state Capitol on May 3, 2023. Mara Silvers/Montana Free Press; A grain silo near Miles City, Montana. Tim Evanson/CC via Flickr; The deed of Gianforte’s neighbor that was featured in Ryan Busse campaign ad criticizing the governor’s low tax bill. Screenshot from YouTube; Data screenshots from Gianforte’s property. Montana State Library.

The post Montana’s agricultural tax rules slash bills for thousands of million-dollar homes appeared first on Montana Free Press.

COLUMBIA FALLS — On the Friday afternoon before Christmas, as some in the Flathead Valley left work a little early or rushed to the store to do some last-minute holiday shopping, a small group of students were hard at work inside the woodshop at Columbia Falls High School as if it was any other day of the year. While a long holiday break awaited them when the final school bell rang, there was no desire to cut corners or put their tool belts down a little early.

Since 2019, students at Columbia Falls High School have helped build cabins for employee housing and other important structures for Glacier National Park. This school year, the students are finishing their sixth two-bedroom cabin for the park and their 13th structure overall. They have also constructed entrance kiosks and tool sheds. 

Glacier officials said the student-built homes have helped the park deal with a shortage of employee housing in recent years, especially on the east side of the park. 

“Glacier National Park struggles with hiring and retaining employees because of the limited in-park housing we have and how unaffordable housing is outside the park,” wrote Jim Foster, Glacier’s chief of facilities management, in an email to Montana Free Press. ”Providing housing like these cabins for seasonal employees can help entice those interested to apply for and then accept a position to work in Glacier.”

The School-to-Park Program was the brainchild of former deputy superintendent Eric Smith, who had seen a similar program in Denali National Park in Alaska. The partnership between the park and the school is a win-win for both sides; the park gets much-needed structures at cost and the students get experience in carpentry, plumbing, electrical work and more.

Columbia Falls High School wood instructor Manolo Victor and Glacier Park carpenter Bob Jellison lead the class. Jellison has worked for the Park Service since the 1990s and has been the coordinator between the park and the school since the program’s beginning. He said he’s enjoyed working with the students — 76 in all — and is always impressed with their work ethic. 

“They’re getting to work on a project from start to finish,” Jellison said. “Every day these kids get to see the progress that they’re making on the cabin and what they’re able to do with their own hands. You can really see them take pride in their work.” 

Among the students working on the Friday before winter break was senior Janna Gorelkin. She took the class because her brother had and the experience has been helpful as her family is remodeling their house. 

“I learn something every day in this class,” she said. 

Gorelkin was working with Noah Baker Kelley, a junior, to install siding on the structure. The employee cabins are 468 square feet and have a small living room, kitchen, bathroom and two bedrooms. Jellison said the buildings are “tight but comfortable.” 

“Providing housing like these cabins for seasonal employees can help entice those interested to apply for and then accept a position to work in Glacier.”

Jim Foster, Glacier National Park chief of facilities management

Jellison said Foster has been instrumental in securing funding for the program over the last few years. Presently, it’s funded by the National Park Foundation, which is also supporting a historic preservation carpentry intern in partnership with the Great Basin Institute during the summer of 2025. The Glacier National Park Conservancy has also been an important partner for the project, including providing funding for electrical service at the school’s shop facility when it started. The conservancy has also paid for tool bags and tools that are gifted to the students at the end of each school year. 

When the cabins are completed in the spring, they are loaded onto a truck and taken to their permanent home. So far, two cabins have been installed in Many Glacier, two at Rising Sun and one in Polebridge. This year’s structure will be installed in Many Glacier. 

Columbia Falls High School students are not the only ones building cabins for the park this year. Welding students are also building bear-proof boxes to store food at campgrounds. This fall, the advanced welding class has been building a prototype, and in the spring, an intermediate class will construct seven more, said instructor Ben Schaeffer. Like the cabins, the bear-proof boxes provide students with valuable skills and a way to give back to their community. 

“Knowing that these boxes will be in the public eye — that they’ll be used by thousands of people over the years — encourages the students to do their best work,” he said. 

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LIVINGSTON — From the hillside above her home on Suce Creek, Maggie McGuane has a clear view of the property a Miami-based investment firm is eyeing for a luxury resort development. 

The lower boundary of the empty three-lot parcel is easily identifiable. It’s been planted in winter wheat, highlighting the right angles that form the property’s lower edge. The upper lot has more relief, stretching up a pine-dotted hillside.

McGuane has climbed above the cottonwoods that shelter her house from Park County’s infamous wind — blowing moderately on a late October day — to explain why she finds a proposal to put 100 cabins, a restaurant and a spa in this tucked-away slice of Paradise Valley a “uniquely mysterious” prospect. 

The mystery pertains to peculiarities of the 90-acre property, which is still listed for sale, and the inscrutability of the parties involved: an out-of-state landowner named Robert Pappert whom McGuane has been unable to reach outside of communications with his attorney and realtor, and Flex Capital Group, an out-of-state real estate developer that’s an unknown quantity in Montana.  

McGuane has been unofficially appointed by her neighbors to lead the charge against the development, which has generated difficult conversations about zoning in the two months since the proposal came to light via an email exchange unearthed by a local nonprofit. McGuane and others argue that the development is out of alignment with the area’s predominantly rural character, and a poor fit for a community eager to avoid the breakneck development that’s reshaping nearby Bozeman, a rapidly growing college town of 57,000 that was recently crowned one of the country’s “coolest” small cities. 

Though McGuane is well aware of an outpouring of interest in the amenities Paradise Valley has to offer, aesthetic and otherwise, several features of Flex’s plan have challenged her understanding of the voracity of the land lust transforming Paradise Valley, the place she scattered the ashes of her mother, actress Margot Kidder, and the home she said she can’t imagine leaving.

Suce Creek is a relatively tight drainage perpendicular to Paradise Valley, a wider valley that has long been a thoroughfare for ranchers raising cattle, anglers casting for trout in the Yellowstone River, and tourists eager to spot geysers, grizzlies, wolves and bison in nearby Yellowstone National Park. Even without a zoning district precluding the type of commercial resort development Flex has in mind, McGuane finds it hard to imagine more than 100 structures and 400 parking spaces packed into a 90-acre property with so much slope. “It just doesn’t make any sense,” McGuane said, going on to describe the land as “rattlesnake-crusted, barren [and] windblown.”

“Barren” pertains to water availability, which McGuane said is “core to this battle,” especially given an active lawsuit between Pappert and neighboring landowners and the fact that several of her neighbors have had to redrill their wells in recent years in search of a reliable water supply. 

Pappert, a North Carolina-based dentist, acquired a right to some of Suce Creek’s water when he purchased the property in 2014. Since it’s not a particularly senior right, scant water is available to the property owner during the dry months of the year. A three-year legal battle produced a recent water court ruling finding that Pappert is entitled to 40 miner’s inches of water (roughly 450 gallons per minute), but whether he has access to that water via an easement across his neighbor’s property remains legally unresolved.

Another access issue pertains to roads. Though the property is just a few miles from two major north-south routes — Highway 89 and its cousin to the east, East River Road — Suce Creek Road is a gravel road prone to drifting in with snow when Park County’s winter winds kick up in earnest. 

Finally, there are concerns of the horned, hooved, furred and fanged variety. On a recent fall day, dozens of cattle roamed above a cattle guard posted with an “open range” sign. The Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness, just a couple of miles up-drainage from Pappert’s property, supports the kinds of large mammals that need distance from people to thrive, including moose and rarer animals. In 2006, a trio of teenage hikers spent nearly two hours tucked into the fetal position to protect themselves from a charging grizzly bear. 

Up on the hillside, McGuane takes a break from throwing a stuffed octopus for Penny, her copper-colored mutt, to relate the story of a black bear that frequented the drainage from 2018 to 2022. He was first seen as a small cub near her house. Her husband dubbed the bear Darren. 

McGuane’s not sure what happened to the bear, but she suspects a neighbor shot him. She knows plenty of people in Park County don’t share her views about large carnivores — or any number of natural resource issues, for that matter — which is part of the reason she’s been so struck by what she describes as consensus around the Suce Creek development.

“It’s amazing to see everyone in agreement — and this is Park County-wide. I have grown up around these things being huge battles. This is my first experience with a proposal that, across the board, everyone thinks this is a bad idea,” she said. “This development has challenged all of our notions of how far things could go, how nonsensical the growth could be.” 

‘THE Z WORD’

Like other residents of southwestern Montana, McGuane learned about the development from the Park County Environmental Council, a 34-year-old nonprofit perhaps best known for a successful multiyear campaign to fend off an exploratory gold-mining operation in nearby Emigrant Gulch that state environmental regulators permitted in 2017. Curious if murmurs about a new development in Suce Creek were founded, the group submitted a record request to the county planning department in early October.

“This is my first experience with a proposal that, across the board, everyone thinks this is a bad idea.”

Suce Creek resident Maggie McGuane

The request produced about a dozen emails between Park County Planning Director Mike Inman and Nir Balboa, one of Flex’s managing partners. Balboa described the property’s location and inquired about what sort of environmental reviews would be required for a 100-cabin development sketched out in renderings for Flex projects in Utah and North Carolina that he described as “identical to” the company’s plans for Paradise Valley. The documents show small, flat-roofed cabins with lots of right angles and glass situated near 27,000 square feet of shared amenities: an airy 200-seat restaurant, a pair of indoor pools with a view into surrounding green space, an event space and a storefront for recreational gear.

The renderings generated an immediate stir on social media. (“Tell these derivative traders that don’t give a flying damn about this place that they are not welcome here,” software executive and local lodge owner Jeff Reed wrote on his Facebook page shortly after Park County Environmental Council shared the renderings. “Make this an election issue for our county commissioners.”)

Park County fields inquiries from developers trying to understand the regulatory lay of the land in the county “fairly frequently,” Inman told Montana Free Press in a recent interview. It doesn’t take long to give interested parties the broad outlines: There is a sign ordinance along Highway 89 as well as five smaller citizen-initiated zoning districts scattered throughout the county, but there is no county-wide zoning. Local review requirements for most commercial projects — including those like Flex’s — are therefore extremely limited, he said. Substantive project reviews would instead go through state agencies such as the Montana Department of Natural Resource and Conservation, which would examine the water-availability piece of the equation, and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality, which would review project components pertaining to wastewater management and public waterworks. 

“Nobody wants things in their backyard, which we hear a lot, but there are no guardrails,” he said. Inman and the appointed, volunteer-staffed county planning board he works with spent several years developing a proposal for an agricultural and residential preservation zoning district (previously dubbed a “conflict mitigation zoning district”) that would have allowed local elected officials to weigh in on proposals like Flex’s, as well as other commercial enterprises such as tire dumps, asphalt plants, wind farms, chicken processing facilities and shooting ranges. 

County commissioners voted to put that proposal on ice in 2022, partly due to the logistical challenges of taking public comment during the COVID-19 pandemic. It generated intense interest: 226 pages of comments regarding the zoning proposal landed in county employee inboxes. In an interesting twist, anti-zoning and pro-zoning contingents banded together to halt it. One side argued that it went too far, and the other said it didn’t go far enough.

“Fear runs both sides,” Inman said of the two camps’ unusual cooperation. “When you are operating out of fear, it is really difficult to have consensus and productive conversations.”

The community fears that county planners are grappling with now underscore why it’s better to discuss growth before conflict around a specific proposal sharpens the debate, Inman said. “I’m really amazed at how [the Suce Creek proposal] has blown up, for something that may not even get built.”

Whether Flex is casually interested in Pappert’s property or fully committed to pursuing a Paradise Valley development is a source of widespread speculation in Park County seat Livingston and beyond. Billed as an “innovation-oriented real estate investment firm with fully integrated acquisition, development and property management expertise,” Flex was founded in 2020 by real estate and hospitality executives with experience in the Miami and New York City real estate markets. The company did not respond to emails and calls seeking comment. 

Property owner Pappert declined to be interviewed, but the realtor representing him told MTFP on Dec. 3 that Pappert is still accepting offers for the property, which has been listed intermittently since 2021. It’s currently listed for $3.9 million. In 2014, the year Pappert bought it, it was listed for $800,000.

Park County Environmental Council Co-Director Max Hjortsberg said the Suce Creek proposal strikes him as a “very Big Sky-esque” development slated for an area that has retained its agricultural foundation and “quiet social fabric.” “This is indicative of a new type of development,” he said. “[We’re] being sought after by a different level of developer and investor.”

Since the nonprofit received its record request, Hjortsberg said, it’s learned that Flex has approached at least two other Park County property owners with purchase offers. (They were declined.) “They’re doing their due diligence, so we think they’re very serious and definitely making a play at this development opportunity,” Hjortsberg said.

Erica Lighthiser, Hjortsberg’s co-director, said she doesn’t particularly relish the marathon time commitment involved with zoning questions — “the ‘Z’ word,” she calls it — but she’s grateful that the Suce Creek prospect has reignited conversations about community planning.

“We need something, because otherwise it’s this slow erosion of this ecosystem and this area where there’s a little development here, a little development there. And all of a sudden, we’re like everywhere else.”

NEXT STEPS

To Lighthiser’s relief, conversations about the Suce Creek development aren’t confined to social media — they’ve spilled over into the City-County Complex, the nexus of local government for the 18,000 people who live in Park County. 

Lighthiser said she’s encouraged that county residents voted in June to deny Referendum One, which would have repealed the county’s existing growth plan and effectively kneecapped a county-wide zoning initiative. To the chagrin of planning proponents, a sister initiative, Referendum Two, did pass. As a result, any new county growth policies — or amendments to the existing one passed in 2017 — won’t be implemented unless they garner the approval of voters living outside of Livingston and Clyde Park, Park County’s only incorporated communities. 

On Nov. 20, the commission held a workshop on growth before a standing-room-only crowd in the City-County Complex’s Community Room. Though the workshop wasn’t explicitly about the Suce Creek proposal — the county attorney advised against discussing developments that may eventually come before the commission — the project came up frequently in public remarks during the hour-long meeting. 

“We need something, because otherwise it’s this slow erosion of this ecosystem and this area where there’s a little development here, a little development there. And all of a sudden, we’re like everywhere else.”

Park County Environmental Council co-director Erica Lighthiser

First up to the microphone was Suce Creek resident Richard Walker, who said Flex’s project would jeopardize his water and, by extension, his property value. He said five of the “dozen or so” families living in the drainage have had to drill deeper wells in the decade since he moved into the area, and he’s heard of similar issues in more southerly drainages. “If this property goes in at Suce Creek, the water usage is going to render our properties worthless,” he told commissioners. “We won’t have water.”

A couple of attendees advised commissioners to consider their legacies, and to act proactively and swiftly to initiate county-wide zoning. Kevin Johnson, who described himself as living “within eyeshot of the Suce Creek project,” implored the commission to preserve Livingston and Park County’s “old-school charm.” Still others cautioned that without guardrails, the area is destined for the growth-related issues that have afflicted other communities like Bozeman and Big Sky.

Leslie Fiegel with the Livingston Chamber of Commerce and It’s My Land, a landowner rights organization, offered a different view. Park County residents have had lots of opportunities to participate in planning discussions, she said, and the outcome “has played out the way that it should.”

“This is not a time for political division. This is not a time for blaming others or companies that want to start a new business,” she told commissioners. “Thank you for what you’ve done up to this point. … We have your back.”

Park County’s three commissioners stayed quiet through most of the meeting. Toward the end, though, they opened a window into their views about where one person’s property rights end and another person’s start — the tension at the heart of so many land-use debates, both locally and West-wide.

Mike Story, who is midway through his term, described the Suce Creek development and the discussions it’s engendered as “an ongoing thing” and encouraged Park County residents to keep reaching out for conversations. He said he’d like to see similarly packed meetings in Park County’s less populous areas — places like Clyde Park, Emigrant and Gardiner — “just [to] have ideas out there that we can look at.”

Commission Chair Clint Tinsley, whose term is up at the end of this year, said there are options the commission can pursue now, but they’ll require a lot of hard conversations — a nod to how “beat up” commissioners have gotten in meetings about previous zoning proposals.

“If the majority of this community wants zoning, that’s probably where we need to go,” said Tinsley, who formerly led Livingston’s public works department. His seat will be assumed by Jennifer Vermillion, a Shields Valley hay and pig farmer, in January.

Brian Wells, an Emigrant business owner appointed to fill a commission vacancy in 2023 and recently elected to serve a four-year term, said in his careful drawl that he would like the planning department to evaluate growth-wrangling options that other counties with similar populations and political leanings have pursued.

“We’re a pretty diverse and divided community,” he said, “but one thing we have in common [is] most everybody I talked to would like to see some kind of guardrails, some kind of protection.”

MONTANA MICROCOSM

For nearly two months, McGuane has made it her mission to learn the public and private tools Suce Creek residents can use to protect their drainage. They’ve mulled over county-wide zoning and citizen-initiated zoning, purchasing the property outright or encouraging a land trust to make an offer. 

No solution is perfect, McGuane says, so they’ve also hired an attorney to represent their interests if the sale goes through and Flex forwards their proposal to state regulators. (DEQ spokesperson Rebecca Harbage told MTFP on Dec. 3 that DEQ hasn’t fielded any proposals or outreach from Flex.)

In the meantime, McGuane said she and her neighbors are “in a weird state of limbo.” But that status hasn’t been without benefits, she said. 

“This is the most perfect tiny example of the conflict all over the state. So much of it is just the conflict between people from remarkably varying backgrounds with big financial losses and gains on the line,” she said. “If we can do a good job working through this, I would love for this to be a good example for the rest of the state.”

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